I so resent it when movies insist on telling me what they’re about.
You know what, The Soloist? I just watched two hours of a
wisecracking-yet-golden-hearted journalist (Robert Downey Jr.) helping
a schizophrenic homeless dude (Jamie Foxx) get back on his feet and
achieve his dreams through the power of music (and teach a few lessons
of his own—hello, homeless wisdom!). The lesson is clear. I do
not require the closing Velveeta speech about courage, humility, faith
in the power of art, believing, loyalty, and especially grace. NOT.
NECESSARY.

“Based on a true story… a story in progress”
(puh-huh-huh-leeeeeeze), The Soloist concerns one Steve Lopez, an Los
Angeles Times columnist looking for his next big story while trying to
stay afloat in a drowning business. One lucky day, he comes across a
fiddlin’ hobo, Nathaniel Ayers, who hates littering, loves patriotic
top hats, is all crazy in the brains, and something-something-something
about Juilliard. Lopez is on the case!

After a little digging (and being inexplicably doused in urine, both
human and coyote, several times), Lopez discovers that Ayers really did attend Juilliard, where he was a cello virtuoso, but dropped out after
the onset of his schizophrenia—a journey explained through
super-cornsville flashbacks (in which we discover that schizophrenia
looks exactly like the “visualizations” that my highest roommate likes
to watch on the computer while he listens to the Pharcyde). Lopez finds
Ayers a cello, and Ayers gets all schiz-motional, and then he plays the
cello in the freeway tunnel, and then the pigeons fly, fly, fly
meaningfully away over downtown L.A. while Ayers pulls special music
faces (so you know he’s FEELIN’ IT), and Lopez gets weepy in the
eyeballs, and the pigeons fly ALL THE WAY TO HEAVEN! That’s called the
pidge of redemption.

The Soloist, thanks to Downey, who is a
one-man-turning-bad-stuff-into-good-stuff machine, is way less
embarrassing than it should be. I swear, the dude can pull off
anything, even this Oscar-pandering triumph of the human spirit crap.
The film is awkward sometimes and boring other times, but it’s not
particularly painful. The weirdest scenes involve “actual homeless
people,” as we were told before the screening began, in which the
filmmakers apparently went to L.A.’s skid row and filmed Downey
interacting with its residents. Downey walks around all
hum-de-dum-whitey-whitey-white-white, and the skid row people are all,
“I’m gonna kill you!” and “Where’s my crack?” and “More crack, please!”
and the whole thing feels just the tiniest bit unsympathetic and
exploitative, you know? Like, oh, homeless people! Homeless people say
the darndest things! Homeless people smoke the darndest crack! Homeless
people threaten the principal cellist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic
with the darndest spiked club! But I guess they do sometimes. They
do. recommended

Lindy West was born an unremarkable female baby in Seattle, Washington. The former Stranger writer covered movies, movie stars, exclamation points, lady stuff, large frightening fish, and much, much more....

21 replies on “On Screen”

  1. “Homeless people smoke the darndest crack!” is the best sentence that has ever happened to me, I think.

    (Oh, and I also think Downey should have let Jamie Foxx in on his “nobody goes….” idea from Tropic Thunder.)

  3. I clicked through from Slog to read this specifically because I was hoping you’d talk about Hobos. And you gave me so. much. more.

  5. Is there a direct line from The Caveman’s Valentine to this movie? I mean, haven’t we pretty much seen it before? Homeless black guy is musical genius, thus surprising uptight white people everywhere?

  8. Every time I see a commercial for this movie I get “Mr. Wendal” by Arrested Development stuck in my head…

  9. I especially hate the line in the trailer when Downey’s talking about Foxx and says something like, “He will guide you home.” That’s just the cheesiest, most overwrought line ever. I hope it’s somehow better in the movie than in the trailer because I don’t want to think a movie with such a cheesy line in it could get made by people who should know better.

    Although the cheesiest trailer in the last several years is still “Amazing Grace.”

  11. God, how many more movies about mentally challenged black folks who’ve lost their former glory who are then re-discovered by angsty white folks do we need? This is totally a movie that didn’t need to move beyond being a trailer — it’s beyond obvious. I love me some Robert Downey, Jr. (esp. after “Iron Man”), but come on, Bobby. These are the types of movies you make on your way back up, not after you’ve made the comeback.

  12. Eat your cinematic hearts out Mr. Hollands Opus, American Movie, American Splendor…I could go on but I got bored. Been there, done that. NEXT!

  14. I agree. “Homeless people smoke the darndest crack!” Is like the best written sentence in modern literature to date. It REALLY is. Like that is HILARIOUS. Go Stranger!

  16. In the movie Jamie Foxx is mentally ill not mentally challenged (there is a difference)..just thought I’d clear that up

  20. It’s based on a daily newspaper column, which more than accounts to any remotely intelligent viewer for the Velveeta speeches, the story-in-progress qualification and and the triumph-of-the-human spirit cliches that you so savage. A divine being will be conjured out of the ether solely to create a peridition to burn up this author for her contempt for literature, culture, sympathy for one’s fellow man and even mass literacy. Seriously, you should burn in hell for trashing a eulogy to newspapers’ civic importance.

  21. Why the fuck would I pay to watch a movie about a homeless guy with schizo?

    I can see that kinda action on the street for free!

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